Richard's Indoor Propagation

[greenthumbomaha]

Yes, daytime for sure. Its going to be a glorious spring 60 degree day, its 26 now. I'll have everything outside today starting about noon when the temp hits 45 and its sunny. That usually means sneaking away from work or shooting back across town if I'm out doing errands. I've never had a plant snap at the base from wind unless the entire tray went airborne or 100mph straight line winds came along and took a mature plant along with cage down together (PaulF and my Iowa neighbors can probably relate to that!)

Next few days of highs in the low 40's and then a sensational weekend with highs in the 70's!
Think I'll risk it and plant kale and chard to free up some room near the window. May even roll the dice and set out brussel sprouts today.

[Hermitian]

For the last week and half, I've had half of my indoor-propagated plants outdoors braving the variable winds in daytime temperatures in the 70's and night time temperatures in the mid 50's. I also brought them in a few times to avoid getting pounded by rainstorms.

Well, the tomato plants were getting too big for their 4" pots so I transplanted them today into 12" plastic pots. The pepper plants are still doing ok, only about 6" high.

I made the following soil mix:
1 cubic foot local decomposed granite (left over from construction)
1 cubic foot Kelloggs Topper (left over from a project last year)
1 quart fresh worm castings (for bacteria and worm eggs)

As I transplanted, I dusted exposed roots of the plants with about 1/4 teaspoon of Mycorrhizae powder per plant.

After watering the plants and soil down, I placed a 1+ inch layer of 1/4 inch orchid bark on top of the soil to slow down evapotranspiration (we have lower humidity here).

I marked the pots using a white-out pen (Bic Wite*Out) -- a trick I learned from fellow fruit maniac Julie Frink.

Here's the six transplanted tomato plants:

[Hermitian]

Here's some buds forming the Sun Gold plant in the propagation area. It looks like my first fruit sets will be indoors!

[falconblack]

Wow,still snow here but temps are getting better.We get about 40 degrees here today.Won't be seeing tomatoes like that till may I guess.

[Hermitian]

Today I finished transplanting out my tomatoes, sweet peppers, and chili peppers. That's the end of seed starts for this year!

Four of the six tomato plants will need transplanting again in a month. Everything else will probably remain in these pots until the end of the growing season.

[greenthumbomaha]

That's a sweet pepper garden. My container peppers always produce before their inground siblings. I looked up Kelloggs Topper and it says composted ingredients. It looks red in the photo, what would that be. You got a lot of mileage from your 2 cu ft self made mix. I'm going broke buying container soil for my free bakery buckets. I have 8 3 gal frosting buckets and I've bought Sanctuary soil (a little left over from my lettuce planter) , 3cu ft Berger 7 mixed with Fox Farms compost for 5 buckets, 2 Cu ft Dr Earth which filled 3 buckets. One each early annie, stupice, beaver lodge , one brussels sprouts, one kale and chard combo, and 3 broccoli. That's $6 per plant!

Also, you were right about the wind. I was detained at work and the weather deteriorated as the day went on. We had some really bad 65 mph gusts (sustained 35 mph). No snap victims , but a few looked mighty rugged and haven't recovered so far. Power lines in the area fared much worse.

- Lisa

[Hermitian]

Originally Posted by greenthumbomaha

... It looks red in the photo, what would that be. ...

I placed a 1+ inch layer of 1/4 inch orchid bark on top of the soil to keep the soil from drying out to quickly.